“I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would
rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union
without it.”

America had not yet celebrated her 85th birthday
when the South seceded from the Union in the year of our Lord 1861.
Secession was recognized as a God given right that was also exercised by
the 13 American Colonies in their separation from Great Britain in 1776
to form the United States of America.

Some
say America and the Constitution died a little with General Lee and the
South at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia in April 1865.

The
courtesy and respect shown by General Ulysses S. Grant and his men to
General Robert E. Lee and his weary men at the surrender and Lincoln’s
wish for a peaceful re-uniting of the North and South would be short
lived. The President’s death would be replaced with a bitter hatred by
some in the North toward the men and women of the former Confederate
States of America. It has been written that Maryland sided with the Union but the truth is….

The
State Legislature of Maryland prepared to vote on secession in 1861 to
join the Southern Confederacy but Federal troops were sent to squash
their attempt. There is little doubt that many Marylanders resented this
attack on their States rights and many were sympathetic to the cause of
the South including the Surratt’s who owned a boarding house and
tavern. The home to the Surratt’s would be named Surrattsville and today
is Clinton.

In July 1864, four women risked charges of treason to smuggle
supplies for Confederate soldiers across the Potomac River. Their story
begins on the Maryland-Virginia border in northern Loudoun County, a
place of divided loyalties and fierce fighting, and serves to challenge
conventional notions regarding nineteenth century women as weak and
apolitical.

The climate of war that framed the journey of Elizabeth White, Kate
and Betsie Ball, and Annie Hempstone into Union territory to obtain
supplies was one of increasing desperation for the Confederacy. The
women’s illicit crossing of the Potomac from Virginia to Maryland
coincided with a renewed
burst of fighting on the border. In July 1864, General Robert E. Lee
had ordered General Jubal Early to initiate an attack against Washington
D.C., and in tandem with this offensive, Col. John S. Mosby was sent to
sever communication lines between Washington and Harpers Ferry. Col.
Mosby succeeded in defeating Union forces at their Point of Rocks base
on July 5, 1864, and spent the evening dining at the Confederate enclave
of Temple Hall. Temple Hall, located north of Leesburg, was the
residence of Henry Ball, the father of two sons in the Confederacy.

Ball
himself briefly fought early in the war and was once imprisoned for
refusing to pledge allegiance to the Union. Also living there during
this time was Elizabeth White, the wife of Confederate cavalry officer
Elijah V. White. Mrs. White was not present at that night’s festivities,
however, for on that morning she and three friends had embarked on a
daring mission north into Maryland to retrieve supplies for “our dear
Maryland boys in grey.” Annie Hempstone later wrote of their adventure
as a “little trip across the Potomac,” which belied the true perils of
their journey.

Morris Dees is arguably the most vicious hatemonger in America. There is
not enough space here to give you all his repugnant behavior and bigger
government views.

"'Til the Cash Comes Flowing Like a River..."

In an article titled Poverty Palace, Morris Dees told journalist John
Edgerton that "I had a traditional white Southerner's feeling for
segregation."...

"Morris Dees and I [Millard Fuller], from the first day of our
partnership, shared one overriding purpose: to make a pile of money. We
were not particular about how we did it; we just wanted to be
independently rich. During the eight years we worked together we never
wavered in that resolve."...

In 1961 when Freedom Riders were beaten by a white mob at a Montgomery
bus station, Dees [and Fuller] expressed openly his sympathies and
support for what had happened at the bus station.

When one of the men charged with beating the Freedom Riders came to
their office for legal representation, Dees and Fuller took the case.
The legal fee was paid by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizen's
Council. [Fuller, Millard. Love in the Mortar Joints. New Century Press:
1980 and The Progressive, July 1988]...

Arrested and removed from court in 1975 for attempting to suborn perjury
[bribing a witness] in the Joan Little murder trial in North
Carolina....

On 11 July 1804 Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounded
former Treasury secretary and inveterate statist Alexander Hamilton in
a New Jersey pistol duel. In a match like that, you simply have no
idea who to root for.

On 11 July 1864 Confederate Jubal
early began a raid that carried him to the gates of Washington, DC.
Unhappily, it didn't carry him clean through the gates.

For
the scientific historians of the new American Historical Association in
the mid-1880s and beyond, the American South was one of the greatest
obstacles in the way of changing the way Americans view history. There
were holdouts in the antebellum North as well as Washington Irving, for
example, lived in the days when historians were self-taught and
uncontaminated by the scientific method, yet still managed somehow to
make significant contributions to knowledge and pen useful histories.

“On September 9
[1884], in the early afternoon, a small group of college presidents and
professors of history met in . . . the United States Hotel to organize
the new association [and] Dr. Herbert Baxter Adams of the Johns Hopkins
University, moving spirit behind the organization, [was] to act as
secretary. Adams was already making plans to gain federal backing . . .
and he hoped its headquarters would be the capital and its charter
would come from Congress.

But
in spite of Adam’s insistence on “a national association,” the new
organization was far from national in its membership. The West was
represented by Charles Kendall Adams of Michigan, and the South by the
men from Johns Hopkins, native New Englanders. From the time of the
founding of the Association in 1913 . . . Southerners made up a small
percentage of the membership [only 6 percent of a total of 2,843]. Yet,
Southern history and evidence of a concern for history in the South
filled a relatively large number of pages in the Annual Reports and the
American Historical Review.

In
his position as organizer, prime mover and secretary . . . Adams set
the policy . . . to promote the interests of history, but history as
defined by a small group of academically trained historians. Most of
the members were not so trained, and some resented the control by the
college men, as did the novelist–historian Edward Eggleston.

The
task [of the Association] was not a simple one, because the college men
were promoting an approach to history at variance with the main current
of American historiography. Most historians in the United States had
recorded the past of their town or county, State or region, because it
was their locality and they were interested in it and in seeing that its
accomplishments did not go unnoticed.

[The
new scientific historians] implied, and stated, that they had no
interest in the past of a town, State or region for its own sake. They
were only interested in that aspect of a locality’s past that might
throw light upon the general development of an institution, such as town
government, the plantation system, or slavery.

It
was no coincidence that the American Historical Association [AHA] was
established under the wing of the Social Science Association. To the new
historians history was a social science and, they insisted, the very
foundation of all social science. The mission, then, of the Association
was to replace the traditional approach to history with the new
scientific approach.

[Adam’s
saw the importance of gaining recognition for the Association and
stated that] “. . . I have never begun to realize until this year the
importance of corporate influences, of associations of men and money.”
But Adams continued relentlessly, aiming always for the time when
trained historians would cover the country – when their standards would
be the only standards for history and the [AHA] would be not only a
truly national, but a truly professional organization.

But
[the greatest] obstacle to the new history was the fact that the South
already had a well-established historical tradition . . . [and] a rich
historical literature. The South not only lived in history, it lived on
history. History served the Southern States as God served New England.
Every aristocratic Southerner knew his family tree . . . Most people of
the South knew that American history started with the settlement of
Virginia, not with the landing of the Pilgrims . . .

There
was no dearth of history or of historical interest in the Southern
States, but it was not the kind that the new scholars could accept. This
history emphasized the uniqueness of place and people, and its truth
was sought not in musty-smelling manuscripts and dead documents, but in
living tradition and vivid intuition.

The
first meeting was dominated by men of the Northeast. In 1889 . . . at
the sixth meeting . . . Southern history for the first time was
recognized as a separate field of study for the new science. The first
session on Southern history convened Tuesday morning, December 31 [and the first of five papers was an] essay on Bacon’s Rebellion. It was not on Southern history.

The
great mission of the new Southern scholars [of the AHA] was to cut
loose from traditional history and examine the Southern past
impartially, to discover its true role in national development. None of
the new scholars wrote as a native of a Southern State, but “from the
point of view of an American who is at the same time a Southerner, proud
enough of his own section to admit its faults, and yet to proclaim its
essential greatness.”

All
professional practitioners denounced quackery in history through the
medium of their Association, just as the doctors were doing through the
American Medical Association. The work of Southern [scientific]
historians, [even though it undermined the traditional Northern
interpretation of American history], was accepted because it was done
with the new technique and the approach of the new history.”

"The Terror Factory" author Trevor Aaronson exposes the Bureau's
undercover sting operations for the farce they are

In the dozen years since the 9/11 attacks, we’ve watched as
a classified new legal regime for government surveillance has been
hashed out, local police forces have become heavily armed military-type
units and a whole new layer of bureaucracy has hatched to provide us
with an abundance of “homeland security.”

Aaronson recently appeared on the AlterNet Radio Hour. Below is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

Joshua
Holland: Trevor, the raw statistical data say that Americans have a
significantly better chance of being struck dead by lightning than of
being killed in a terrorist attack here at home. It’s obviously
different for people in some other countries.

I
got that from the official terrorism statistics put out by the FBI and
other related agencies. And they also track foiled attacks. These law
enforcement agencies say that these foiled attacks prove that they are
saving American lives. How would you respond to that?

Trevor
Aaronson: I’d say that the majority of the foiled attacks that they
cite are really only foiled attacks because the FBI made the attack
possible, and most of the people who are caught in these so-called
foiled attacks are caught through sting operations that use either an
undercover FBI agent or informant posing as some sort of Al-Qaeda
operative.

In all of these cases, the defendants, or the would-be
terrorists, are people who at best have a vague idea that they want to
commit some sort of violent act or some sort of act of terrorism but
have no means on their own. They don’t have weapons. They don’t have
connections with any international terrorist groups.

The policy change will take effect in the fall of the 2013-2014 school year, and although the change has made news, the idea is nothing new.

“This is a discussion we’ve had for a long time. We’ve been very
transparent. We want to keep our students safe,” said Superintendent
Jeff Staggs. However, just because the discussion has been transparent
doesn’t mean the details of the program are, which Staggs admits is part
of the intent.

School board president Jerry Lahmers explained that it would be
counterproductive to release too many specifics of the program, such as
the number of people carrying firearms or which buildings they occupy.

John Franklin Riggs left family members clinging to a capsized boat
and for their lives in a sea of stinging jellyfish, swimming miles and
climbing rocks at the shoreline in pitch blackness to reach help at the
first house he saw.

Thank goodness somebody answered the door.“He
came to the right house,” said Angela Byrd, whose dog’s barking
awakened her quiet house in Chance at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning.
There stood Riggs, soaking wet and barefoot.“He said, ‘I’ve been swimming since sundown; I need help,’ ” she said.

Delish, who was inside the Kokesh residence when the raid occurred,
said, “After two loud knocks at the front door and a brief pause, the
police broke down the door with a battering ram.”

Once the police were inside, they threw a flash grenade into the
foyer area, she said. “I thought someone got shot.” A flash grenade is
a non-lethal explosive that produces a blinding flash of light and loud
noise, devised to temporarily disorient a person’s senses.

There were eight adults inside of the home and one pet, she said.
“Luckily Adam’s pit bull Baloo was safely secured in his crate at the
upstairs of the home.”

Delish said she was shaken-up by the incident that lasted six
hours. “I went towards the back of the home to exit, and there were four
or five police officers on the back porch with drawn firearms.”

The adults were ordered into a small front room, their cell phones
were taken, and they were summarily handcuffed without being Mirandized,
she said. Miranda is a warning given by police to criminal suspects
in police custody before they are interrogated to preserve the
admissibility of their statements in a court of law.

“Their behavior was unprofessional and their search of our persons and the home gratuitously unconstitutional,” she said.

“They ransacked the two-story home, and pushed items into piles,” she
said. “One of the officers purposefully knocked over a glass of water
on my possessions.”

One of the adults had a Glock 30 pistol in his possession, Delish
said. “He immediately informed the police and they retrieved his
firearm.”

“Later he was punched in the back of the head for asking to use the
rest room,” she said. “I witnessed Kokesh being kicked by a police
officer while he was handcuffed and seated.”

“The police used every opportunity they could to rough us up,” she said.

Another longtime Birmingham city employee has filed a federal charge
of discrimination alleging racism, professional humiliation and
retaliation within Mayor William Bell's administration.

An EEOC charge is the first step before an individual may file a federal discrimination lawsuit.

In the charge sent to the Equal Opportunity Commission today, Charles
Yates, a supervisor in the Public Works Department, says his problems
began when Bell took office.

Yates, who is white, claims he was forced to take a lower-paying
position and demeaned, including being told to stay out of City Hall or
take a service elevator when in the building.

"Within days, my supervisor Adlai Trone, Director of Public Works,
informed me that Chief of Operations (Jarvis)Patton issued a directive
forbidding me to appear in City Hall for any reason," Yates' complaint
alleges. "I was instructed that should I be called to City Hall, I was
to arrange for one of my subordinate supervisors to handle the call.
Approximately two weeks later, Public Works Director Trone reminded me
again that the Mayor's Office did not want to see my face at City Hall."

Former Sanford, Fla., police chief Bill
Lee on CNN Wednesday claimed he was fired last year because he refused
to arrest George Zimmerman just to appease an outraged public. Hey says
there wasn’t enough evidence to warrant an arrest in the killing of
Trayvon Martin, a fact that didn’t matter to some city officials.

When he refused to make the arrest, Lee
claims he was fired from his position after just 10 months on the job.
Officials argued they let Lee go because the public and elected
officials had lost trust in him.

“I had one of the city commissioners
come to me on two different occasions and say, ‘All we want is an
arrest.’ And I explained to them, ‘Well, you just can’t do that, you
have to have probable cause to arrest somebody.’ And it was related to
me that they just wanted an arrest, they didn’t care if it got dismissed
later. And you don’t do that,” Lee told CNN’s George Howell.

When asked how Zimmerman was able to remain free for 40 days after shooting Martin, Lee said the evidence just wasn’t there.

Lee argued he did not get a “fair shake” in the Zimmerman case, despite upholding his oath of office.

“I’m happy at the end of the day I can
walk away with my integrity,” he added. “I’m at peace with it on most
days. I’m a man of faith. But it stings.”

An Army veteran in Texas is fighting
for his Second Amendment rights after learning that a misdemeanor pot
conviction from 1971 has disqualified him from ever owning a gun.

Ron Kelly, who retired from the Army in
1993 after 20 years of service, was recently turned away when he tried
to buy a .22-cal rifle at a Wal-Mart in Tomball, Texas, after a
computerized background check flagged the 42-year-old arrest. The story
was on the front page of the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday.

Kelly said he had forgotten about his minor pot violation from high school — the federal government, on the other hand, has not.

The Army vet spent one night in jail
and was given one year of probation. Though he didn’t realize it at the
time, he was also apparently stripped of his Second Amendment rights for
a lifetime.

Our
friends at the Gun Owners of America (GOA) have highlighted a crafty
plan by Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) to break Senate rules in order to
achieve his leftist goals. If he gets away with it, he will be able to
push
through radical appointments that otherwise would never stand against
the Constitutionally mandated 'advise and consent' process. Among other
things,
the results of Reid's scheme will dangerously threaten the Second
Amendment rights of every gun owner across the nation. It's important
that you be
aware of this, and we need your help to stop it. Please see below for
details provided by the GOA, and to learn what you can do to shine a
light on
Reid's deceptive plan to circumvent Senate rules.

From our friends at Gun Owners of America:

Harry Reid Moves to Destroy the Senate Rules that are Blocking
Passage of Gun Control

You can’t be “just a little bit pregnant.”

Similarly, you can’t
cheat “just a little.”

Once you have made it clear that you are willing to break the rules in order to win, the rules are
meaningless.

So it is with some alarm that we note that Harry Reid -- in an exercise of raw power -- intends within the next week to try to
openly break the Senate rules in order to confirm all pending Executive Branch nominees.

You
may remember that, at the beginning of the
year, Reid made the specious argument that you could change the rules at
the beginning of a two-year congressional session -- and only at the
beginning of the congressional session.

Well, we are no longer at the start of the term.

A quarter of the 113th Congress had now
come and gone. And even the pseudo-intellectual arguments for obliterating the Senate rules are gone.

This is an exercise in raw political
power. This is an effort by Reid to say: “I can cheat whenever I want. And no one can stop me.”

The
first showdown case will
occur over efforts to fill the National Labor Relations Board. You may
remember that Obama was slapped down by the courts for appointing these
“members” as “recess appointments” when Congress wasn’t in recess.

Now, having been caught cheating, Obama
and Reid are threatening to tip over the chess board in order to confirm these illegal “recess appointments.”

But that’s
just the beginning.

Once it is impossible to filibuster Executive Branch appointments, Obama will soon carry through on his word to slam
through a rabidly anti-gun zealot to head the ATF.

And does
anyone think that the Senate would comply with the niceties of the rules
it has
obliterated -- if what was at stake was an anti-gun zealot nominated to
the Supreme Court in order to overturn the Heller and McDonald
decisions?

Finally, it is just not credible for Reid to say: “I’m going to cheat. But I’m going to define the way in which I cheat to
limit my cheating to this narrow way.”

All year, MSNBC has been whining that Democrat gun control has been thwarted by the Senate
filibuster rules.

If the Senate’s filibuster rules are obliterated, you can be sure that the Toomey-Manchin amendment -- with its
universal gun registries -- would soon be brought up again and passed.

Gun
owners should realize that the Feinstein gun and magazine bans
lost by such a large margin only because a lot of anti-gun senators knew
they would not muster the 60 votes needed. If there were a 50-vote
margin --
and their votes made a difference -- many of these anti-gunners would
switch their votes and pass Feinstein.

So the reason gun control
did
not pass is because the Senate rules allowing us to filibuster it. They
may seem dry and boring, but the question of whether we win or lose will
depend on them.

ACTION:Contact Your Senator. Tell him to oppose Harry
Reid’s “cheat scheme” to violate the Senate rules in order to change the Senate rules.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Now to the testy exchange between
judge and defense lawyer Don West. Now, it all started when the judge
asked Zimmerman directly if he wanted to testify.

JUDGE DEBRA NELSON, FLORIDA CIRCUIT COURT: Mr. Zimmerman, like I said
before, you're aware that during this trial, you have the absolute
right to remain silent. You do not have to say anything, do anything,
prove anything. Is that correct?

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN, MURDER DEFENDANT: Yes, your honor.

NELSON: And you have the right to testify if you want to. Do you understand that?

ZIMMERMAN: Yes, your honor.

NELSON: And I've given you an opportunity to discuss with your
attorneys whether or not you want to testify in this case, and you have
indicated that you have had those discussions?

ZIMMERMAN: Yes, your honor.
NELSON: And have you made a decision, sir, as to whether or not you want to testify in this case?
DON WEST, GEORGE ZIMMERMAN DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Your honor, I object to that question.

NELSON: OK. Overruled. Have you made a decision as to whether or not you want to testify in the case?

Prosecutors convinced the judge presiding over George Zimmerman’s
second-degree murder trial Thursday to allow jurors to consider
manslaughter, but their surprise bid to include felony murder -- based
on child abuse -- in the jury instructions was denied after a heated
morning session in which an angry defense attorney called the effort a
"trick."

Judge Debra Nelson ruled against the prosecution's request that
jurors be able to consider a third-degree felony murder charge based on
child abuse. Under felony murder statutes, a defendant can be charged
with murder if he or she causes someone's death while committing a
felony, in this case, according to the prosecution, child abuse. At 17,
Trayvon Martin was a minor when he was killed.

"I just don’t think that the evidence supports that," Nelson said of
the felony murder charge. "And if I’m not sure about that, I’m not going
to charge the jury on that."

Earlier, defense attorney Don West bristled when the prosecution
first proposed the third-degree felony murder charge, alleging it was a
"trick" by the state.

"Just when I thought this case couldn't get any more bizarre, the
state is seeking third degree murder charges based on child abuse?" he
said after the prosecution's request. "It's outrageous that the state
would seek to do this at this point."

It’s apparent Eliud Martir Montalvo never heard of the old warning about taking a knife to a gunfight.
It was a retired Marine who was carrying a concealed weapon that
brought a halt to Montalvo’s alleged crime spree, which included a
series of attempted carjackings in Orange County, Fla., this week.

Authorities said the attacks all were within a block of one another,
and the episode was halted when a Marine Corps veteran, Andrew Koplin,
pointed his concealed weapon at the alleged carjacker and kept it there.

A famous U.S. televangelist is urging Americans to take an example
from Egyptians who ousted former President Mohamed Morsi and “rise up”
to stop Obamacare.

“You know they revolted in Egypt against the oppressive actions of
the Muslim Brotherhood, and this example of state socialism is something
that Americans should rise up against,” Pat Robertson said Wednesday on
the “700 Club,” referring to President Obama’s Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act.

Kids will be kids no matter what a school’s policy
is on playing with imaginary weapons. They’re going to play cops and robbers,
they may chew their pop
tart into the shape of a gun and yes, even throw imaginary
grenades to save the world from evil forces.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, teachers and school
administrators exercised zero-tolerance policies with regard to weapons—real or
imagined—but they took
it way too far. A heightened sensitivity after such a horrific event is
understandable but not exercising any judgment is ridiculous. For many of the kids
affected by such policies, it wasn’t just a matter of getting scolded—most of
them got suspended and will thus have that on their permanent record.

Now, one lawmaker is taking action. Rep. Steve
Stockman (R-Texas) introduced legislation this week that would block federal
funding for schools that enforce policies that punish students
for playing with imaginary weapons. Via The Hill:

Yesterday you saw some hawks, whose
ideology is dying and whose worldview is being discredited every day,
launch an attack on Senator Rand Paul by attacking one of his brillian
aides, Jack Hunter.

Jack’s sin in their eyes was having spoken favorably of states’
rights, and negatively of Lincoln. They can’t seem to recognize that
states’ rights–even secession–does not equal racism; it constitutes a
brake on the feds’ march to totalitarianism. Most modern day states’
rights advocates recognize the sovereignty of the states and their
inherent ability to nullify and avoid federal violations of the
Constitution in order to protect life and liberty from an overgrown,
intrusive federal leviathan that literally now interferes in or spies on
every facet of our lives. And most historians and legal scholars who
appreciate personal liberty and limited government recognize that the
history of Lincoln’s assaults on civil liberties is a topic capable of
divergent views and worthy of exposure.

But really, the hawks and neocons weren’t attacking just Jack—who
possesses profound intellectual honesty and who has a gift for reducing
complex arguments to understandable terms–for his views on federalism.
Everything that was “broken” in the “news” story in the Free Beacon has
been public information for a long time. It was not hidden. And it was
not news. Some of it was youthful hyperbole, and all of it was sliced
and diced out of context.In other words, the neocon world view, which
assaulted our civil liberties in a way that would make Lincoln blush and
brought us 12 years and two trillion dollars’ worth of useless wars, is
crumbling. And it isn’t just crumbling on its own.

It has a
sledgehammer being taken to it every day by Senator Rand Paul. So, when
someone does a hit piece on the Senator’s gifted aide, or when you see a
vicious attack on the Senator himself as you no doubt will, think about
why it is happening. The attacks are coming from those on the losing
side of history.

There’s a growing effort to create a 51st state out of parts of northeast Colorado.

Ten counties, including Weld and Morgan, started talking about
seceding last month. Now some people Lincoln and Cheyenne counties say
they want to join a new state they’d call “North Colorado.”

Organizers of the secession effort say their interests are not being
represented at the state Capitol.

Representatives from the 10 counties
held a meeting on Monday in the town of Akron in Weld County to begin
mapping the boundaries for the new state they say will represent the
interests of rural Colorado.

Remembrance

To die for one’s country is not only an act of bravery, it is THE act of bravery. For soldiers, it is just an extension of their military career, a part of their duty. As leaders have asked their soldiers to sacrifice themselves for the good of the society, it is only right for leaders to go through the same motion. They should practice what they have preached.

As war is seen as a noble act, tu sat serves as redemption in case of defeat. It is also a way to tell the enemy: “You might have won the battle/war but you don’t deserve to win because you don’t have the chinh nghia (just cause).” And it is not only just cause: it is the moral belief that the cause they are fighting for deserves their total sacrifice. Continues below

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Core Creek Militia

==============================My sixth great grandfather, his wife, and five of his six children were killed in battle with the Tuscarora Indians at Core Creek, NC.

The Seven Blackbirds

==============================My third great grandfather was an Ensign in the Revolutionary War, and saved his unit's flag after being wounded at the Battle of Brandywine. He was also at Kingston (Kinston), Wilmington, Charleston, Two Sisters and Augusta. He was at the defeat at Brier Creek and also Bee Creek.

Requiem Aeternam -
Eternal Rest Grant unto Them
==============================
My second great grandfather was killed in action on May 3, 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
=============================
My great grandfather and great uncle knew all the men in the "Civil War Requiem" video as they were part of the 53rd NC which was the sole unit defending Fort Mahone. (Fort Mahone was named "Fort Damnation" by the Yankees) *Handpicked men of the 53rd (My great grandfather was one of these) made the final, night assault at Petersburg in an attempt to break Grant's line. This was against Fort Stedman which was a few miles to the slight northeast. They initially succeeded, but reinforcements drove them back. This video is made from photographs which were taken the day after the 53rd evacuated the lines the night before to begin the retreat to Appomattox. I have many more pictures taken by the same photographer, one of these shows a 14 year old boy and the other is the famous picture of the blond, handsome soldier with his musket.
===========================
*General Gordon promised the men a gold medal and 30 days leave if they accomplished their task and many years after the War my great grandfather wrote General Gordon, who was then governor of Georgia about this incident. They exchanged several letters which I have framed. See first link below.
===========================
*The Attack On Fort Stedman
============================
"His Colored Friends"
============================
Lee's Surrender
=============================
My Black NC Kinfolks
============================
Punished For Being Caught!

Great Grandfather Koonce

He was a drummer boy in the WBTS, survived the War only to die a few years later. He was caught in an ice storm on his way home, but instead of seeking shelter, continued on his horse until the end. His clothes had to be cut off and he died a few days later.